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To H. W. Bates 18 April [1863]1

Down. | Bromley. | Kent. S.E.

April 18th

Dear Bates

I have finished vol. I.2 My criticisms may be condensed into a single sentence, namely that it is the best book of Natural History Travels ever published in England. Your style seems to me admirable. Nothing can be better than the discussion on the struggle for existence & nothing better than the descriptions on the Forest scenery.3 It is a grand book, & whether or not it sells quickly it will last. You have spoken out boldly on Species; & boldness on this subject seems to get rarer & rarer.—4 How beautifully illustrated it is.5 The cut on the back is most tasteful.6 I heartily congratulate you on its publication.—

The Athenæum was rather cold, as it always is, & insolent in highest degree about your bending facts.—7 Have you seen the “Reader”:8 I can send it you, if you have not seen it.

I have got spare copies of my article in N. Hist Review,9 which I will send you on Monday & you can use or burn them as you like.

CD’s annotated copy of Bates 1863 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 35–7). CD wrote notes on a sheet pasted into the back of the first volume of Bates 1863; these include a note relating to p. 55, ‘competition in the Tropics’, where Bates described (Bates 1863, 1: 54–5): the struggle which necessarily exists amongst vegetable forms in these crowded forests, where individual is competing with individual and species with species, all striving to reach light and air in order to unfold their leaves and perfect their organs of fructification. The forest scenery of Pará is described on pages 44–9; see also pp. 290–3.

In the preface to The naturalist on the river Amazons, Bates acknowledged his indebtedness to Edward W. Robinson for the illustrations of smaller animals, and to Josef Wolf and Johann Baptist Zwecker for depicting most of the larger subjects and scenes (Bates 1863 1: vi). The first volume included eighteen illustrations.

There is no woodcut on the back of CD’s existing copy. However, each of the two volumes of Bates 1863 bears on its front cover a gold-embossed illustration of a forest house surrounded by palms; standing in the foreground is a person holding a container on his or her head.